Christian Today Poll Says Bill Nye Won Debate With Ken Ham

Starting last night, the website Christian Today held an informal poll on its website asking who won the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate. As of today, the clear winner, by a landslide, was Bill Nye, who captured a whopping 92% of the vote. Ham was struggling along with a mere 8% of the vote. Some may be surprised that the stunning victory was recorded on a specifically Christian website, but anyone who watched the debate might have a difficult time defending Ham, who offered no scientific evidence to support creationism. Instead, he stuck mainly to the Bible, Jesus and the concept of salvation.

According to PEW research, about 60% of Americans accept Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, while another 33% think humans have co-existed, in the same form as they do today, with all other animal “kinds.” The idea of animal kinds was illustrated last night by Ham, who believes the Bible is a literal transcription of history.

The Christian Today poll reflects not only the majority viewpoint with regard to evolution, but some say it’s also indicative of the fact that Nye’s skillful debunking of Ham’s claims is what caused Nye to have won the debate. Ham believes that Noah and his family built a gigantic ark that housed about 7,000 animal “kinds” right before God sent a huge flood to destroy the earth. It was from these animal kinds, Ham says, that all other animals sprang forth.

Nye pointed out that there is no way Noah could have built an ark that was able to withstand the rigors of the sea and explained that an experiment has been done which disproves the Noah story. A huge wooden ship was built by the best ship makers in the world, but it was not able to survive on the open ocean. Because it was so big, the ocean’s waves cause the boat to twist back and forth until it finally began to suffer structural damage. It eventually ended up sinking.

Nye also delved into the question about the age of the earth, and he showed examples of fossils, trees and ice spheres which are all much older than 6,000 years. Ham is what’s known as a “young earth creationist” and he counts the age of the earth by stories in the Bible.

Commentary online this morning also is trending toward the Nye camp, with several major websites and online magazines declaring Nye the winner. However, the Daily Beast, a popular online news magazine, heartily disagrees. Author Michael Schulson says Nye did a terrible job and that the debate was “a nightmare for science.” Schulson says Nye was boring, “geeky” and that he rambled. Schulson also says he was so disinterested in Nye’s talk that he had to start drinking in order to make it through the rest of the show.

Apparently, though, Schulson’s sentiment is not shared by the people who participated in the poll at the Christian Today website, because that poll states that Bill Nye won the debate against Ken Ham by a huge landslide. With the debate over and the commentary beginning to wind down, questions linger over whether the debate helped or hurt Ham’s cause. With all the publicity and attention the debate delivered, one thing’s for sure: both men are undoubtedly walking away with fatter wallets.

“But all of these difficulties together, as staggering as they are, are not the real problem. The major difficulty in chemical evolution scenarios is how to account for the informational code of DNA without intelligence being a part of the equation. DNA carries the genetic code: the genetic blueprint for constructing and maintaining a biological organism. We often use the terms of language to describe DNA’s activity: DNA is “transcribed” into RNA; RNA is “translated” into protein; geneticists speak of the “genetic code.” All these words imply intelligence, and the DNA informational code requires intelligent preprogramming, yet a purely naturalistic beginning does not provide such input. Chemical experiments may be able to construct small sequences of nucleotides to form small molecules of DNA, but this doesn’t make them mean anything. There is no source for the informational code in a strictly naturalistic origin of life.” – Dr. Ray Bohlin, M.S., population genetics, M.S., Ph.D., molecular biology.

Just because something appears to have been intelligently designed, it doesn’t mean you can say for certainty that it was. Show me the evidence of a creator, and I’ll believe it. Until then it is more convincing to me that life resulted from purely naturalistic causes…because nature and the universe is all we can measure, all we have evidence of, all that we can observe.

If you point to DNA as being too complex to occur naturally based on our current understanding of nature, then why not just say “I don’t know why this occurred or how, let’s find out” instead of positing a creator.

If those were the terms of the debate(6000 years and does Creationism perfectly reflect what we see), it would be impossible to win. There is no biblical doctrine which says that the earth must be 6000 years old, however, macroevolution BARELY works only if the earth is Billions of years old. Mathematicians who work in statistical analysis repeatedly show that the probabilities of the things that Macroevolution calls for in order to work are so small as to be practically 0% (http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4218209/k.1176/The_Five_Crises_in_Evolutionary_Theory.htm).

The link leads to a page with the usual strawman arguments. If Darwin could not explain the evolution of the eye – even more praise to him as a pioneer who – together with wallace – developed a theory that is valid til today even after Darwin had to guess on some points. Don’t forgat that Darwin could not even know anything about DNA in the first place, let alont it’s double helix structure or it’s complex machinery. His theory was perfectly proven afterwards with each progress in biology, especially DNA. So what about Darwin’s problems with evolution of the eye? Today everything about the eye is essentially solved. What does it tell us, if evolution deniers argue against Darwin’s original problems? It appears they have no better arguments than to stubbornly focus on 150 years old riddles that are solved for centuries.

To say that 92% of people thought Bill Nye won on a Christian website, makes me wonder how many Christians really voted. Of course Ken Ham based his beliefs on the Bible; that’s what I’d expect a Christian to do.

The arguments have never changed. The evidence Ken Ham brought is the same as always – the words of the Bible. Bill Nye used the same old argument – show me proof of God. The evidence Nye brought still has only the scientific backing of like minded individuals. If an explosion occurs, how can an object stop in midflight and have other objects miraculously start rotation around it? Where is the proof of evolution? There are no skeletal remains of “near human” or anything that evolved from one creature unto another.

You thought you were talking about the Big Bang Theory? Are you actually that ignorant, or are you Lying for Jesus™?

Of course, I understand you’re between a rock and a hard place, since attacking straw men makes you look, at best, ignorant, and at worst dishonest and weak, whereas attacking the truth makes you look stupid.

Tough to be you.

“Guess again.”

I don’t have to. Fossils are real things, and we have fossils of various transitional forms. But I suspect you know that – unless you’re exercising your ignorance again.

Old Ken Ham Kenobi used to be known simply as Ken before the flood. He was vegetarian, much like the lions on the Ark. It was the dinosaurs they ate together after a long year of starvation, but since I wasn’t there I don’t know for sure. Yet, the pigs that survived tell a much much different story…

The debate was not to decide if evolution is a viable model for teaching origins in schools, it was to debate if Creation is a viable model to teach origin in schools. Nye’s job was not to sell you on Evolution, but rather point out why Creationism is rubbish and should not be taught alongside evolution. Any process that begins with a religious explanation should be thrown out right away. If Ham can not explain things without the intervention of a God-like figure to fill in the blanks, then he has failed from the start. Basically if there is a hole in his logic, he fills it with God. Provide evidence that God truly exists and then there is a start. And please, don’t sell me that look around you God must be involved nonsense.

This very ‘unscientific’ poll touted by Christianity Today is laughable….as if atheists/evolutionists aren’t capable of registering votes multiple times. Christianity today is a sold-out, quasi, milky-toast, grey excuse of Christianity. I long ago discounted anything and everything that comes from Christianity Today, and they have, once again, proven why.

Just because the truth is boring doesn’t make it any less true. I tried as best as I could to watch this debate from an unbiased standpoint. To me, the evidence Ham presented was “A couple of scientists agree with me! And you can’t know the past because you weren’t there!”

I am a creationist and agree with a lot of what Ken Ham said but he didn’t back it up or defend his arguments well at all. So although I believe in what Ken said I have to say Nye won the debate because Ken simply failed to defend his viewpoints.

I give you credit, Nathan. Even though you believe Ken Ham without any real proof, just religious belief, you at least admitted that Bill Nye backed up his argument with facts while Ken Ham had no solid basis for any argument. I appreciate rational people like you who can admit defeat even when it goes against what you believe. You will probably burn in hell now for not pledging your soul to the Ken Ham believers, but at least us heathens like you. 🙂

Actually, he did exactly what the situation called for. If he had given himself too much to specifics, the headlines would have read, “Ken Ham believes Bible because wombats are..”

You get my point. It would have been impossible, in the time given, to do justice to the minutiae. He pointed millions of people to full answers to any question on the website and answered, in general, that which was asked of him within the time limits.

It was Nye who did not accept the challenge of the questions posed by Ham.

“How do you account for the laws of logic and laws of nature from a naturalistic worldview that excludes the existence of God?”

“Can you name one piece of technology that could only have been developed starting with a belief in molecule-to-man evolution?”

This is news cleary took sides with Nye. Why? I understand the landslide and the Chritian Today poll remarke. But when you want to point out the debate, outlying your opinion, you do not say that Nye could not give answer to the other method to date the age of the earth beyond radiometric dating, wich should noted, since his entire position relies on beliving in billions of years.

Actually if ya watched the debate he gave plenty of scientifically viable means other than radiometric dating. Also he didn’t need to prove the earth was billions of years old, he simply needed to prove the earth was older than 6000 years old which he did several times. Perhaps you don’t agree with his examples of using accumulated ice levels, or the rate at which the continents shift, or the measure of light from distant stars to prove the earth is older. However one thing you can’t ignore one thing you can’t refute is trees, which was one of his many examples. There are plenty of trees older than 6000 years and its remarkably easy and accurate to determine their age. That’s by simply cutting one down or cutting out a section of one and count the rings and there is a ring for every year. This is evidence that cannot be refuted.

Evolutionists do need to prove billions of years. Hundreds of thousands, or even millions don’t help. The nearly unlimited time factor is the all essential magic ingredient.

If tree rings, ice-cores, radiometric dating, etc., can be shown not to exceed a given, recent time period, then evolution is dead and special creation is still the only alternative.

The sole reason creationists cite upper limits is to show that the billions of years requirement is not realistic.

eg. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today’s input and output rates.

This does not disprove recent creation, it only sets an upper limit. There are specific reasons why, in a Biblical worldview, this time reduces to a few thousand years (see AIG website). It does, however, disprove a 3 billion year old earth.

I think Mr Nye spent more time promoting Kentucky. Do you belive that GOD would let anything happen to Noah regarding about the ARK sinking. Of course NOT!!!. Regardless of when the world was created. It still was created my GOD and anyone who debates that better come to Jesus Christ very soon.

What makes your religious views even less plausible than they already are is that you and your supposed god need to threaten people in order to make them accept it. You and your supposed god are like teenagers who are desparate to be liked by everyone. Pathetic.

Where did your ability to judge plausibility of religion originate?
How is it that you can conceive of abstract notions such as “supposed god”, and how is it that you recognize something as threatening or pathetic? By what standards do you make these judgements?

Using your “logic” think of all of the horrendous and terrible things that your god HAS let “something happen to”. I can think of one to get you started. Let’s see… the flood, where he destroyed every living man, woman, child animal and plant on Earth! Pathetic.

And your evidence supporting the evolutionist position is what? And sorry, you can’t use any reference to the theory of evolution to prove that evolution is true, that is what we call a circular argument.

” who offered no scientific evidence to support creationism” What scientific evidence did Nye offer to support a big bang theory? He said multiple times he didn’t know. So we take someone’s best guess as truth?

What? No. Science is a work in progress. When we don’t know, we try to discover, instead of believing in unfounded fairy tale nonsense. The point of Nye saying he didn’t know was to inspire you to find out.

So what? People go confidently wrong all the time. The fact that you are absolutely certain that you are correct in the face of a complete lack of good evidence to support your certainty just means that you are almost certainly wrong.

The degree of certainty with which someone holds a belief has no bearing on whether the belief is true.

Evolution is one of the most evidenced theories that there is and is supported across multiple fields of scientists from countries around the world. That is why it is taught in school. You could actually research it yourself. The debate was about whether creationism had the same POW to consider teaching it. The problem is that there is no information in creationism, only stories. 10 plus creationism is still 10. 10 plus science is limitless.

So by using your obviously broken logic Bill Nye lost the debate because he couldn’t prove the big bang which was completely irrelevant to the debate? Ya do understand the debate was about whether or not creationism was viable and whether or not the world was 6000 years old right? Apparently not.. Bill Nye won the debate because he proved using several methods that the earth was older than 6000 years and he proved it wasn’t viable because good science and scientists must examine any and all evidence and when new evidence presents itself that disproves your theory you must accept facts and change your theory, not ignore or manipulate the truth in order to fit your beliefs. Ken Ham said so himself nothing would change his mind that the earth is 6000 years old, which means hes not a scientist, his idea of science is bad, and he’s most likely delusional.

If you checked the poll the whole way it was stuck on 98% to 8% when I noticed it has not changed I grabbed a screen shot at 9000 votes then 14000 ever it is unreal consistent voteing or it is a dicky poll that packs it in after the first 100

The point of the debate was not to prove evolution (hasn’t been done yet, it’s just the theory with the most evidence); the topic was Is Creation a Viable Answer. Bill didn’t attack the bible, he explained the things that are inconsistent with observable science